When the author is David Lindsay-Abaire, what you expect from a play called Rabbit Hole is Alice, not astrophysics. So this carefully calibrated, painfully funny domestic drama — in which slim comfort arrives in contemplation of the cosmos — comes as a surprise on the heels of the wildly whimsical Fuddy Meers, whose heroine awakes every day with amnesia, and Kimberly Akimbo, in which a teenager has a disease that causes her to age at the rate of ripe Stilton. In contrast to the wacky, dysfunctional fantasias on which South Boston native Lindsay-Abaire has made his name, Rabbit Hole (presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Boston University Theatre through December 3) is, for all its allusion to parallel universes, solidly set on planet Earth — Larchmont, to be precise. And it represents both a step forward and a step back for the playwright, whose imaginative earlier works are more theatrical but also more arbitrary. It’s as if Craig Lucas had gone to bed and awakened as Donald Margulies.

RABBIT HOLE: For all the allusion to parallel universes, David Lindsay-Abaire’s play is set solidly in Larchmont.

Rabbit Hole, Lindsay-Abaire’s first play to be presented on Broadway, was nominated for a 2006 Tony; the poignantly acted, nicely manicured Huntington staging marks its area premiere. At the center of the drama are affluent, intelligent suburban couple Howie and Becca, whose marriage is under strain in the wake of unspeakable loss, information about which is reeled out like fishing line. In the first scene, we meet Becca in her grand-scale kitchen crisply folding laundry as freewheeling sister Izzy recounts a bar fight. Inch by inch, Izzy’s tale of decking a woman who harassed her in a tavern turns into the revelation that Izzy is pregnant by her musician boyfriend. And inch by further inch, we learn that the tiny clothes Becca is boxing used to belong to her four-year-old son, who eight months earlier was killed by a teenage driver after chasing the family dog into the street.

The most wrenching thing for Becca and Howie, obviously, is the loss of their child. But second is the couple’s inability to comfort each other. Manhattan broker Howie clings to his memories like a lifeboat, waking up in the night to watch home movies in the dark, whereas Becca sets out to erase every painful reminder from the surface of their life. He is painfully, even lugubriously in touch with his sorrow; hers is spikier and easily turned to anger. They aren’t even sinking in the same ocean, and Becca’s relatives — the kooky sister whose egotism is a good-natured elephant in the room and a blunt mom whose attempt at advice turns into a tangential rant on the curse of the Kennedys — are no rescue team. Throw in the awkward, hurting teenager who ran over the kid and sends Emily Post–polite pleas for absolution and the bereaved couple have their hands full.

Comic thunder Niagara Falls is a great, looming presence in David Lindsay-Abaire's Wonder of the World , and the Theater Project delivers it, in the powerful white-noise rush of its crash, in ethereal shifting mists and haunting glacial-blue light, and in a rise of four tiered platforms hung with translucent, back-lit fringe.

Howie Carr blows up It’s Friday, and Howie Carr Incorporated is in full flog for his new book, The Brothers Bulger (Warner Books).

Stage blogging The main characters of the play Speech and Debate, three Oregon high school misfits, do a lot of their living among the modern technologies of chat rooms, Google, and personal video blogs.

Life after Cheers I saw Twelve Angry Men , the black-and-white 1957 film, in high school in the 1990s.

Players and painted stage It seems the fall theater season was shot from a gun this year, barely after the Labor Day picnic baskets had been packed away.

The circle game It’s a very funny reminder that laughter can make such absurdity almost worthwhile.

Strange bedfellows Wait, lemme get this straight: Was that Howie Carr — who's known for accompanying on-air references to homosexuality with a crude audio approximation of gay sex — happily schmoozing with guest Randy Price this past week?

Crucibles There was room for more than one young Jewish diarist in the occupied Amsterdam of World War II. Anne Frank, who died as a teen, is a 20th-century icon. But until recently, her feisty innocence hid Etty Hillesum's fire.

ARTSEMERSON'S METAMORPHOSIS | February 28, 2013 Gisli Örn Garðarsson’s Gregor Samsa is the best-looking bug you will ever see — more likely to give you goosebumps than make your skin crawl.

CLEARING THE AIR WITH STRONG LUNGS AT NEW REP | February 27, 2013 Lungs may not take your breath away, but it's an intelligent juggernaut of a comedy about sex, trust, and just how many people ought to be allowed to blow carbon into Earth's moribund atmosphere.